Gender-free baby?

While there’s nothing ambiguous about Storm’s genitalia, they aren’t telling anyone whether their third child is a boy or a girl.The only people who know are Storm’s brothers, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, a close family friend and the two midwives who helped deliver the baby in a birthing pool at their Toronto home on New Year’s Day.“When the baby comes out, even the people who love you the most and know you so intimately, the first question they ask is, ‘Is it a girl or a boy?’” says Witterick, bouncing Storm, dressed in a red-fleece jumper, on her lap at the kitchen table.“If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs,” says Stocker.

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Véronique adds: Believe it or not, I don’t have a strong opinion on that one. I don’t know much about the philosophy , politics or ethics of gender identity. There are a few things I know for sure and others that I suspect. Of the few things I know for sure is that social expectations of gender – girls in pink, boys in blue, dolls and trucks etc. – are at best nice tries. I have a son who likes ballet and nail polish, along with Nerf guns and fire trucks. I have a daughter who is mesmerized by big trucks and sparkly high heels. They were raised in a house with equal numbers of Thomas the Tank Engine and Polly Pockets. I hate shopping. My husband likes a clean house. People can try raising a gender-free baby and at best, they’ll get a boy who likes long hair or a girl who likes motorbikes. They’ll still have a boy or a girl. Unless their child develops/ was born with a gender identity issue in which case no amount of dressing in blue or watching High School Musical was going to make a difference anyway. I say this as someone with a transgendered relative: these things run deeper than your childhood toys.

One of the things I suspect is that people with gender issues – real ones that require treatment, surgery and therapy – see studies explaining why they are all mixed-up with the same disdain I feel when I listen to world population experts quote studies proving that mothers of big families all secretly wish they had 2 kids: with eyes rolling way, way back. My point is, we’re all wierd to someone else. Storm’s parents are wierd. I’m wierd to most of my kids’ classmates’ parents. I had three babies at home. Some people consider this tantamount to child endangerment. I never had an epidural. Some people consider this downward crazy.

Another thing I suspect is that Storm’s parents love him (or her) very much as they love their older sons and it seems that they are well cared for. There’s a lot more to worry about and get scandalized over in child welfare than parents who appear a bit nutty. I mean, seriously. Some people manage to starve their kids to death. In Canada. Under the watch of child welfare authorities.

In the end, isn’t it ironic that parents who want to deny the importance of gender will give more importance to their child’s genitals than any of my colour-coded babies will ever get? Ironic but sad for the kid who never asked for the scrutiny. But he or she won’t be the first child to pay for his parents 15 minutes of fame.

What they won’t be able to hide are the INNATE differences between the sexes. Girls and boys are different as any parent who has both will tell you. They should try reading “Why Gender Matters” by Dr. Leonard Sax. Fascinating information from studies coming out there.

I have been bothered by the posting earlier this week by Andrea, “One woman’s look at infertility”, especially her comment that “I don’t want to hurt anyone experiencing infertility and going about solutions in her own way.” Yet, that “own way” so often involves bringing individual human lives into material being, using a few to meet immediate personal emotional desires, and leaving the others to a fate best left uncontemplated. Intellectual honesty and moral rigor can only lead to the conclusion that an adult with the material and intellectual means to pursue personal desires must be trumped by a defenseless, helpless human being who will die at the behest of that same adult. Yet, so many of use still prefer not hurting a grown woman’s feelings by denying her the means to fulfill all of her desires, in the hopes, I expect, of not having our own so judged.

Ultimately, though, it is our society’s general fear of “judging” the choices of individuals that leads us to the aburdity of these parents’ “decisions”. After all, who are we to impose our narrow-minded notions of gender on someone else’s children? I mean, aren’t children the products of these adults’ own choices and decisions? Don’t they exist to fulfill these adults’ personal desires and wants? Once they become adults themselves, then they too will have the right to make their own children and, through them, correct any shortcomings they see in themselves and their own upbringing. If I don’t believe that “what is between someone’s legs” has any bearing on their personal identity and certainly shouldn’t be allowed to limit their self-interpretation, who has the right to gainsay me?

This is where moral relativism has led us so far: incomprehensible numbers of aborted children, botoxed 8-year-olds, 20-year-old frozen “unwanted but wanted” humans in the embryonic stage of development, sex-change operations, lawsuits for gender-free public toilets, and so many other things I have no knowledge of (and am grateful for that.) All that to say that I believe that sometimes you have to hurt people who are in the grips of an obsession that will only bring further harm and hurt to them and those with whom they share this world.

I get mystified by the number of people who told me I couldn’t dress my baby girl in the baby clothes I had saved from her two older brothers. Why exactly would two month old babies absolutely need to be dressed in pink and not green?

But, I think the family described above takes it way to far the other way. While a child should not be pushed to base their whole identity off of “what’s between his/her legs” to deny the child that ability to identify that way isn’t helpeful either. I’d hate for those kids to get the impression there is something wrong with them being the gender they are or acting in steriotypical ways.

I totally agree Christy. I have an older boy who was followed by 2 sisters, and they have all shared many of the same clothes (quite frankly they all look darn good in blue!) I didn’t buy my middle girl a baby doll when she was really little, she played with her brother’s baby toys, trains, balls, trucks, and the like.

Imagine my surprise when I saw her rocking her little dump truck (that her brother used to bang on the floor and cover in heaven knows what outside) then laying it down under the kitchen table and covering it with a dish towel. She looked up at me and whispered very seriously “Trucky is sleeping now. Please don’t vaccuum until he wakes up.”

I went out that day and got her a baby doll. Her response? “Oh! She’s so much more cuddlier than Trucky!” Turns out, she hadn’t really liked how Trucky felt in her arms, but he was the best “baby” she had.

Let kids be kids, and let them express themselves however you want. This far surpasses the gender issues and ventures into trust and connection outside the family circle. Being told to keep a secret from close friends and family is far more likely to cause the kids issues than just being raised to play however they like. Those kids may start to feel that no one else outside their house understands them…when those others really not being given the chance.

I agree with you, Heather. I was influenced by the feminist analysis of societal expectations related to gender, and lo and behold, it was the most important thing to the kids.

Of course they know that they are different between the legs, and totally fascinated by what that might mean. I was to find out that in grade one, my daughter had been parading little brother around to her friends who did not have any! Just give those parents a few years, and they will be laughing at themselves.